With the recent Thanksgiving holiday and the impending winter holidays, the time for reflection on the prior year is upon us. I’ve been wanting to write this for a few weeks now but have had mixed emotions since this has been simultaneously the most memorable and volatile year of my life. This year I bagged my dream job, met a wonderful woman, and finally graduated school before I turned 30, probably the most significant thing I will do with my life. Sadly, this year we also lost our friends Ben and Gil to their passion while in Peru. I miss them and think about them often, although I am even more saddened to say I never got to know Gil as well I could have. This year I also was diagnosed with bladder cancer. On my 30th birthday. I was rather shocked and disappointed.More »

It was a story day, but our athlete seized the day as if lead into battle by Mel Gibson screaming “They can’t take our freedom!” (it was raining in the movie Braveheart and it was raining in the canyon, no Mel Gibson at the race though) More »

This post is an update about the forthcoming Pullharder.org marathon. As you may, or may not, know this year’s race will be held in memory of our friends Ben Horne and Gil Weiss. In this post I am including two things, first is a video of with images sampled from the internet as a tribute to Ben and Gil; Second, is all the pertinent information that you will need for this race. More »

We recently received an email from Eric Tomczak, who was one of the original 3 members of the search and rescue team that went out to find Ben and Gil in Peru. We published his email below in its entirety along with his account of the search. More »

That’s right friends, it’s time for the 3rd annual PullHarder.org Marathon! Some say, “Third time’s a charm.” Well… they are wrong. We got it right the first time, and we are simply perfecting perfection! More »

We are very sad to report that we lost two very good friends and amazing climbing partners. Yesterday morning Ben Horne and Gil Weiss’ bodies were found by the search team. They were putting up a first ascent of a new route on the South face of Palcaraju Oeste in Peru. We would like to say thank you to everyone who helped in the search effort in the many ways they could. We are proud to be part of such an unbelievable community.More »

Camping out in Alabama Hills, LeeAnne and I were planning on heading back to the Whitney region in the next day or two but had no idea what we wanted to do. I was going through guides and the mountain project app on my phone looking for inspiration, and eventually came across a comment by Ben on the Star Trekkin’ page. From there I re-read his TR on star trekkin’ and with new motivation, by the morning it was decided we’d give the Star Trekkin’ – Mithral link-up car to car a shot. It had been a while since my last C2C day, I was overdue for another anyway. More »

The Cordillera Blanca is world renowned for its high altitude mountaineering. Butalmost as awesome as the mountains themselves is the motley crew of international climbers who come to try their hand at getting high, on big peaks, cheap and fast. Example #1, Marko, from the Czech Republic. Hands down, the zaniest Eastern European caricature imaginable, complete with “Borat” accent and a lust for liquor. He climbed in a cotton sweatshirt and used a bandana as sunglasses…aka a blindfold. Marko eloquently explained the great physical difficulties of climbing in the area in said Borat accent: “If my knees had hands, they would punch face!”More »